Herondales Collide
by thisisntidris
Summary: How did Jace Herondale go from being a Lightwood to taking up his Herondale bloodright? When the Sword of Heavenly Fire stabbed through Jace, his mind, his spirit was transported away, to a world incorporeal where he meets William Herondale, his ancestor from ages past, and in trying to understand the strange mindscape they're trapped in discover themselves as people and Herondales
_Hey guys, I hope you like my try at a little TMI/TID combination fic, it'd be great to get some feedback as to whether I should continue or not._

 _Thanks for reading!_

 _-thisisntidris_

* * *

Will Herondale woke up from the best sleep in his life on a hard surface that was most definitely not the feather bed he fell asleep on. Even as he stirred, he had a strange sense that something was missing, something was not quite right. . . What on earth this could be, his sleepy mind couldn't grasp. He could feel, through his aching limbs that gave off the sensation that he had been sleeping for _quite_ some time, that the fire that had warmed him through his long night had died out. His long night with-

He bolted up straight. Tessa.

The night before seemed like an unimaginable dream. A dream of fire burning behind his eyes and in his chest and bursting through walls he hadn't known could exist between two people. So, so, unimaginable. At the simply the thought of it he could taste her lips against his, and- The thought made the unfamiliar feeling of heat cross his cheekbones. Oh, by the Angel. Was it possible to know oneself and yet not know yourself at all? Because he felt as though he'd just discovered himself through Tessa's eyes. Through her smile, her laugh, her kiss. . .

But now he was most certainly not in that feather bed within the cave they had been entrapped in. There was no Tessa to take his breath away for the thousandth time within a series of hours with just herself. There was just Will. On a harsh cool surface his cheek must have been plastered to- he could feel the sting beginning to heat against it. As he brought himself out of his memories from the night before back into the present, he realized the strangest sensation that was filling all his senses. He scoured his mind for the right metaphor to describe the feeling that came over him, which brought him back to being home. Rolling down the hills in their home in Wales, the blue sky spinning above his head as the world tumbled about him; around, around around. . . The jolt of a carriage as the horses take off in their trot, startling the passengers within. The familiar feeling of a horse reeling up underneath his steady rider's hands, of a firm gallop just beginning so that it shocked your senses. The sense of falling. This was how William Herondale compared his impression of the world he woke up to from the single most brilliant, and most regrettable, night of his life. His chest was heaving from the start, and unlike rolling down the hills in his familiar home with its welcoming sky, the feeling of wanting to grasp for something, anything to grasp to keep you from plummeting downwards, the rush in your head and your ears and the dull ache behind your eyes- it did not fade. Will felt his hands grow damp with the terrifying sense of anxiety building up within him, his breath began to come in a rush.

The world was dark and yet burning his eyes with its intensity. He was staring into a world of black, darker than the darkest of nights. Moonless, starless, so deep a darkness that it gave the impression that you were nothing. The only visible thing besides himself was the mist. It was drifting all around, meandering like the clouds in a crystal blue Welsh sky. But it had been years since he had seen clouds as such and he had certainly never been _in_ one. The mist was dawdling around him; above his head, around his sides, through his chest- _through_ him? His breathing rose to a crescendo as his hands pawed at his- clothed?- chest where the mist was coming forth, flowing through his body like he was a specter. _Ewch i uffern,_ he thought viciously, his very thoughts filled with awe and fear at the idea set before him. Maybe he was a specter. He had felt as though his entire life might've been on if it hadn't been for- Tessa.

Despite the strange falling sensation he tried to clamor to his feet, stumbling over his own boots. He was certain he hadn't been wearing those boots the night before. Maybe it _had_ all been a dream; he certainly would have deserved it. That unspeakable, scandalous, beautiful, completely wonderful and yet imperfect thing. . . With his dead parabatai's finance.

 _Jem_ , he thought, a tearing cry rising up within his throat, which he couldn't quite quench no matter how hard he gasped and tried. He stumped to his knees, surprised at the lack of shocking pain when his kneecaps slammed against the cool of the floor. Floor? Was that what it was? He would've wished pain upon himself at this moment. Tessa's grief had mirrored his own in a way he could not explain or put into words. They had shared, they- they had shared each other, and that included their grief. He had felt all the words for Jem she had no power and no possible way to say just as he had felt all her words for him. But how was it that something so beautiful could be so _wrong_? He had never meant- He had never meant for his love for Tessa- the incredible possibility of their love together which he hadn't even let himself think of until she asked for _him_ \- to become tainted. And now, now some part of him desperately hoped that it hadn't been a dream, that she was lost in this strange upside down world, with its specter clouds and falling sensations, to face it with him. He told himself she would need him.

Really, he didn't want to be alone.

He shoved his palms against the hard ground; not wood, not glass, not anything really; it had the feeling of stepping upon air and the look of murky waters. Was this really a dream? It felt. . . very real compared to some of Will's other dreams. They mostly involved Tessa actually loving him and confession that love, Jem's repeated death, scarring him and jolting him awake again and again, Cecily, Mam... His father... He finally managed to stand on shaky legs and to his surprise the strange falling sensation faded somewhat, sinking more to his hips as a heavy ache which was, well, odd, but better than the previous. He took a tentative step forward. This, was not quite as successful as he very quickly found his face shoved up against the floor. Yet again, he was surprised by the absence of the pain in his skull from the impact. There was nothing. It was as though he'd fallen face forward into his bed, not a hard surface. This was... strange. To say the least. Will lay there for a short moment, pondering the uselessness of his existence at that moment (existential crises were a given for William Herondale), and whether the fact that he'd just taken the girl he loved's innocence and, consequently, had just lost his own was even real. If it weren't, he would wake up a . . very lost man. It was, it was, he sat for a moment, staring into the nothing. He felt rather foolish. Being in a strange place with no cognitive memory of how he got there and yet all he could think of was the night before. Although, when he thought of it as a frivolous thought he was immediately defensive. It was not at all a frivolity. It was the world.

He groaned as he began to stand once more (at least he could apparently hear). He had to stop. It had been a dream, he told himself stubbornly. Until further notice. Right now he had to figure out what this, if it weren't a figment of his mind, finally gone insane, was. He found it easier to stand the second- third? - time. His feet were shaky, and his calves trembled, but he stayed upright. He thought again that it was a strange sensation, filled with clarity of the mind but absolute mutiny on the part of his body. There didn't seem to be the same sensation anchoring him to the earth as was familiar. Normally, in dreams, he could not think this in depth about little things like gravitation. He looked down at himself, startled yet again by the fact that he was clothed. He wore a simple white shirt, open at the collar and exposing a bit of his chest. It seemed to be almost glowing in the dark atmosphere, as if under moonlight. He wore his regular trousers, but his braces were gone. He was as free as he would normally be after a night of roaming the town, pretending to be drunk simply for appearances. It was a hard habit to fall out of. Will had been having terrifying sneaks of fear that he would never be himself again. That this was him now. That he was really Sydney Carton, despaired for even by the good. A dog they threw meat to even though they knew he would still be violent. He'd always felt that that must have been how Charlotte saw him. It hurt him more than he cared say.

He'd always thought of Tessa as his Lucie Mannett, the only one who saw past the image of worthlessness and all around bastardly acts that he pushed so hard upon all who knew him. She saw that he was worth something. He'd imagine her, a wife, a mother, telling her husband (just, coincidentally, as Lucie had to Charles Darnay) about the young man she'd known when she was younger. How everyone saw him as a disaster waiting to happen, a drunkard who wouldn't live to see age twenty, but that she'd known him. She'd seen his heart bleeding. This was what got him through the day. Though, her husband was always faceless in his eyes.

So, with taste of Tessa from his 'possibly-a-dream' in his mouth, he was able, allowing himself to truly imagine, for the first time, this faceless husband as himself, where there would be no need for Tessa to describe a Will she'd once known. He'd be beside her always. And it was with this daydream on his mind that he set off, meandering rather awkwardly, to see what there was to find in this strange world.


End file.
